5 Problems ‘the Wall’ Won’t Solve

In this article, Micheal Dear outlines specific reasons why President Donald Trump’s proposed Mexican-border wall cannot hope to be effective in addressing the problems it promises to solve.

“Oh, we’re going to build a wall, don’t worry about it,” President Donald Trump told the crowd gathered to hear him at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. “In fact, it’s going to start soon. Way ahead of schedule. Way ahead of schedule. Way, way, way ahead of schedule. It’s going to start very soon.”

So much for my hopes that Trump might have abandoned his campaign pledge to build a “big, beautiful” wall on the Southern border. The president seems convinced that a 1,300-mile contraption will solve America’s immigration woes. According to the executive order the president signed in late January, the wall is supposed “to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism.”

But the reality is that a wall, no matter how “big,” how “beautiful,” and how “ahead of schedule” Trump builds it, cannot be an effective enforcement tool. The immigration system is plagued with problems and factors that building a wall cannot fix. It might just end up making some of them worse.